Fighting Trump: Short Film about Trump vs. Local People in Scotland

This is a short film I found on Youtube, which shows even more what a grotesque, egotistical clown Trump is. It’s about his attempts to throw about eight local people out of their houses in Menie, in Scotland, so he could build his wretched ‘world class’ golf course. Of course, being Trump, it ain’t a case of accepting that these people aren’t willing to sell. He has to lie, set his legal teams on them, insult them and then try everything he can within the law to make life as uncomfortable for them as possible.

One of the residents talks about how he received a phone call from someone claiming that they were interested in moving up to Menie, and would like to buy his house as a holiday home. The man wasn’t interested, and turned him down. Later he found out it was Trump, or rather, someone on his behalf trying to buy up the land for the golf course. Eight other people had received the same phone call.

Menie is an area of Special Scientific Interest because of its mobile dune system, which gradual shifts up and down that part of the Aberdeenshire coast. Trump and his developers have wrecked it through their construction work. As for this gentleman, the view he moved to the area to enjoy has been deliberately blocked by a mound of earth, but up by Trump.

Another one of the victims is a lady, who enjoys walking around the dunes. This has been stopped by Trump. Or rather, he’s tried to stop her. The law in Scotland stipulates you have a right to roam anywhere you like, with certain exceptions. In this case, Trump is trying to block here because his golf course is a construction site. The lady then contacted the judge and the legal authorities, who’ve said that she could lawfully ramble on the site, if no construction work was underway. So she does. The film shows her walking along the path, talking to the interviewer, before a landrover turns up with one of the security guards, and there follows a conversation in which she explains the situation to him, and that she can get the proper legal documents. Eventually the man in the range rover is satisfied and he drives off.

When Trump couldn’t get his way by offering the local people money, he tried to get a compulsory purchase order. He lied about that too. He denied he tried to get the land compulsorily purchased, but had to retract that lie when the locals got hold of a letter his organisation had written to Aberdeenshire council asking them for a compulsory purchase order.

And then the film interviews the man and his mother, who has really got under Trump’s skin. This fellow moved up their about 43 years before the film was made in 2011, because he’d fallen in love with the place after visiting it fishing. He had organised a campaign to fight back against Trump, and that has irritated the Tousled Twit no end. So Trump has gone on the offensive, calling the man a ‘village idiot’ and saying that he lives in a slum. The man himself responded on Scots television by saying that if he was the village idiot, then Trump was a New York clown. Trump tried to claim that the man was exploiting his mother by making her a member of his campaign, and making some of the legal countermeasures in her name. His mother’s an elderly lady, but she states, quietly but clearly, that she’s her own woman, and has a mind of her own. The man states that he can’t see why Trump wants their land, as it’s miles from the golf course he’s building. He also wonders how Trump can possibly believe it’s going to be world class, when he’s got 11 golf course in America already, and none of them are in the top 100 courses in America, let alone the world. And the film also uncovers evidence that Trump has the support of Aberdeenshire council for his daft plans.

While Trump is not popular with the locals, they’ve received many letters and messages of support from others all over the world, fed up with Muskrat Thatch. This fellow, whose house boasts a confederate rebel flag painted on the side and a suitably insulting slogan about Trump, talks about how most of the letters come from Americans. Some of them don’t even have his address. They just have his name, and the explanation ‘the man who’s fighting Trump’. As for his mother, she’s received 200 birthday cards that year.

This really does show how grotesquely greedy, bullying and mendacious Trump is. Despite all that rubbish about him being against the big corporations, he is exactly that: a large, corporate bully, who becomes increasingly petulant when he can’t get his way. And this is the man, who looks like he’s well on his way to being the next president of the US. In which case, he’s going to try to do to the rest of America, what he’s been trying to do to the people of Menie.

Monbiot’s List of the Corporate Politicos in Blair’s Government: Part One

Chapter six of George Monbiot’s book, Captive State, is entitled ‘The Fat Cats Directory’. The book is about the way big business has wormed its way into government, so that official decisions and policy reflects their interests, not those of Mr and Mrs British Public. In the ‘Fat Cats Directory’ he lists the businessmen and senior managers, who were rewarded with government posts by Tony Blair in May 1997. The list gives the name of the businessman, their ‘previous gluttony’ – a summary of their corporate careers, and ‘Subsequent Creamery’ – their posts in the British government. Those lists are:

Lord Marshall of Knightsbridge.–
Chairman of British Airways
– President of the Confederation of British Industry

– Put in charge of Gordon Brown’s energy tax review, and helped promote the government’s campaign against the Millennium Bug, even though his 1999 holiday brochures told customers that they wouldn’t be responsible for any problems caused by computers malfunctioning due to it.

Ewen Cameron

President of the County Landowners’ Association
Owner of 3,000 Acres in Somerset
Opponent of rambling.

Chairman of the Countryside Agency, concerned with tackling the right to roam, social exclusion in rural areas, and someone, who has very definitely contravened the Countryside Agency’s rules on the maintenance of footpaths.

Lord Rogers of Riverside

Architect of Heathrow’s Terminal 5 on greenbelt land
Architect of Montevetro Tower, London’s most expensive building.

Chairman of the government’s Urban Task Force.

Lord Sainsbury of Turville

Chairman of J. Sainsbury Plc
Chairman of the Food Chain Group
Principal backer of biotech company Diatech
Funded construction of the Sainsbury Laboratory for research into genetic engineering
Replaced skilled jobs with unskilled shelf-stacking.

Minister in Government’s department of trade and industry
Minister with responsibility for science and technology
As science minister, led Bioindustry Trade Delegation to US
Ultimate control over Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Chairman of the government’s University for Industry.

Lord Simon of Highbury

Chairman of BP
Vice-Chairman of European Round Table of Industrialists
Under his direction, BP assisted the Colombian government in forcing peasants off their lands, and imprisoning, killing and torturing trade unionists. Gave money to the 16th Brigade, notorious for murder, kidnapping torture and rape.

Minister for Trade and Competitiveness in Europe
One of the ministers responsible for implementing the ethical foreign policy.

Jack Cunningham MP

Adviser to agrochemical company Albright and Wilson (UK)
Member of Chemical Industries Association lobbying for deregulation of pesticides.

Secretary of State for Agriculture
Chair of Cabinet Committee on Biotechnology.

Sir Peter Davis

Chairman of Reed International, which made 900 workers unemployed.
Chief Executive of Prudential Corporation Plc, company most responsible for miss-selling pensions.

Appointed by Treasury head of New Deal Task Force.

John Bowman

Director of Commercial Union, which possibly miss-sold 7,900 pensions.

On the board of the Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority.

Lord De Ramsey

President of Country Landowners’ Association, sold part of his enormous Cambridgeshire estate for house building, and in doing so destroyed a pond of Great Crested Newts. Lobbies against regulatory burdens on agriculture. Grew genetically modified sugar beet on his land for Monsanto.

Chairman of Environmental Protection Agency.

Paul Leinster

Director of SmithKline Beecham (SB) Plc, which polluted streams in Sussex and Gloucestershire. Previously employed by BP and Schering Agrochemicals, part-owner of bio-tech company AgrEvo, which was publicly shamed for breach of environmental regulations for growth of GM crops.

Head of the Environment Agency’s Environmental Protection Directorate.

Justin McCracken

Managing director of ICI Katalco, responsible for a long list of plants polluting the environment with carcinogens. In 1999 it was listed as the worst polluting company in Europe, responsible for pouring 20 tonnes of hormone disrupting chemicals into the Tees. Also allowed 150 tonnes of chloroform to escape into groundwater at Runcorn. From 1996 to 1997 Friends of the Earth recorded 244 unauthorised pollution incidents from its Runcorn plant.

Regional General Manager, Environment Agency, North-West Region.

Dinah Nicols

Non-executive director, Anglia Water. In 1999 it was prosecuted six times for pollution.

Director-General of Environmental Protection at the Department of the Environment.

Ian McAllister

Chairman and managing director of Ford UK. The company was a member until December 1999, of the Global Climate Coalition, lobbying against attempts to reduce carbon monoxide emissions.

President, Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, which has lobbied against the Department of the Environment’s standards on ozone, lead and sulphur dioxide pollution from cars. Also lobbied against European directives against exhaust gases, removal of lead from petrol, and forcing motor manufacturers to install catalytic converters.

Chairman of the Government’s Cleaner Vehicles Task Force.

Chris Fay

Chairman and Chief Executive of Shell UK, the British company with the most controversial environmental record due to pollution incidents in Britain and in the Niger Delta.

Executive director of BAA Plc, attempting to double size of Heathrow Airport.
President of the UK Offshore Operators Association, oil industry group responsible for lobbying against environmental regulations.

Chairman of the government’s Advisory Committee on Business and the Environment.

Brian Riddleston

Chief executive of Celtic Energy, an open-cast mining corporation which destroyed the Selar Grasslands Site of Special Scientific Interest in Wales, wildflower habitat and home of extremely rare march fritillary butterfly.

Member of the Government’s Countryside Council for Wales.

Graham Hawker

Chief executive of Welsh utilities company Hyder, which sp0ent £42.2m on making people redundant, and only £700,000 on research and development. Opposed windfall tax on privatised utilities.

Chair of the New Deal Taskforce in Wales

Martin Taylor

Chief executive of Barclays Plc. Multimillionaire manager of company which made 21,000 redundant in ten years to 1997.

Lord Haskins

Chairman, Northern Foods Plc. Member of Hampel Committee on Corporate Governance. This was criticised by Margaret Beckett for failing to recommend ways for companies to regulate themselves.

Chair of the government’s Better Regulation Task Force.

Peter Sainsbury

Managing director for Corporate and External Affairs, Marks and Spencer.

Head of Better Regulation Taskforce’s Consumer Affairs Group, whose duties include consumer protection. This decided that voluntary measures and ‘consumer education’ were better than regulation.

Geoffrey Robinson

Director of Central and Sheerwood plc, property owned and chaired by fraudster and pension raider Robert Maxwell. C&S merged with Robinson’s TransTec, to form Transfer Technology Plc. Company later collapsed.

Paymaster General.